


Moonlight Serenade

by CommaSplice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Gen, Haunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommaSplice/pseuds/CommaSplice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upon receiving word that Robert has gone on a bender and is holed up at Storm’s End, Stannis goes to investigate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonlight Serenade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WesterosiQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WesterosiQueen/gifts).



> This was from a Tumblr prompt: "It’s never too late": Stannis x Robert from [jaegerbecket](http://jaegerbecket.tumblr.com/). It was meant to be this light-hearted cracky thing, and it turned into something quite different. I had the Glenn Miller song "Moonlight Serenade" on loop while I wrote it.
> 
> You can listen to the song [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92ATE3IgIs).  
> And I created [a photo set](http://grammarsaveslives.tumblr.com/post/91946713287/for-jaegerbecket-for-their-prompt-the-story-is) as well.

* * *

When Stannis unlocked the door to his childhood home, the scents of salt air, mothballs, must, rain, and somehow his mother’s gardenia perfume assailed him. Those were the fragrances Stannis associated with Storm’s End. All but the last were logical. Mother had been dead for over thirty years. Now as he inhaled and pulled the front door shut and switched on a light, there were other less pleasant odors: stale beer, sweat, and something else. Although he was not a poetic man, he knew the last sour note was desperation.

He had not set foot in Storm’s End in over two decades, but now as he looked around, it was as if he had just returned. Surely the dustsheets covering the furniture must have been removed and replaced many times. It was odd, though, that the corner of the fabric masking what had once been a green plush armchair was twisted in exactly the same way it had been on the day he left the house for good. Stannis was not a superstitious man, but he couldn’t resist looking. He was strangely relieved to see a hideous piece of modern furniture. 

The gardenia fragrance grew more pronounced. Renly must have planted some shrubs, he thought.

_Mother was getting ready to go out. She sat at the vanity dabbing her ears with liquid from a cut crystal bottle. “Your father thinks it has a lovely scent.” She held out the stopper for him._

_“It smells like you.”_

_Mother laughed. “We’ll be out late, but I’ll look in on you and Robert when we get back. Play nicely with him.”_

_Stannis always tried. It was Robert who liked to roughhouse._

_“Come give me a hug.”_

_Stannis was almost afraid of this woman who didn’t look quite like his mother._

_She reached down and enveloped him in her arms and he felt safe once again._

Stannis gave himself a shake and let the dust sheet drop back into place. He wasn’t here to relive the past. He moved forward through the foyer, glancing into the doorways of the living and dining rooms. Renly had made changes, but the house was surprisingly close to his memories.

There was no sign of anything from the study or from the little sitting room. Finally in the kitchen, he found evidence of Robert in the shape of beer bottles and take-out containers.

Stannis resisted the urge to clean up. That wasn’t why he was here. Robert was probably passed out in one of the bedrooms upstairs. He was in the act of pivoting around when he heard a chair scrape. He moved out to the threshold of the porch. “Robert?”

His older brother grunted in response.

“Are you all right? Everyone is worried about you.” He reached to the right where he remembered there being a light switch.

“Don’t.”

But he had. He jumped back at the sight of the paper lanterns.

_He wanted a glass of water. Stannis called for his parents, but they didn’t answer. He pushed back the cotton quilt and padded down the stairs. Hearing music from the living room, he looked in. The phonograph was on and a record spun round and round. He rubbed his eyes and went into the kitchen. Through the screen door, Stannis saw his parents dancing on the porch, their tall forms lit by the gaily-colored paper lanterns. Father had Mother in his arms._

“How?”

“I don’t bloody know. Turn them off.”

“Renly must have—”

“They’re the same ones from—turn them off.”

Stannis instead stared up at them. The once bright colors were now washed-out versions of their former selves. Had Renly found them in a box somewhere and strung them up?

“They’re the same ones,” Robert repeated in a dead voice.

Stannis turned the lights off. 

“There are citronella candles on the table. I left the matches on the counter.” And then after Stannis went back inside, almost as an afterthought, Robert called out, “And bring a glass.”

The candles gave off limited illumination, but they were distinctly less unnerving than the alternative. Robert sat on one of the wicker chairs with a bottle of something in front of him. Stannis took a seat next to him. 

“How did you find me?”

“One of Renly’s neighbors saw the lights and your car and called him.”

Robert snorted, but offered no other comment.

“Everyone is very—”

“Who is ‘everyone’?”

Stannis hesitated. He was here because Renly had called, although Renly’s concern had been more for his property and less for their brother. Further inquiry of Cersei had been enlightening, but she could hardly be called a concerned party. He supposed their children might be worried, but he had no way of truly knowing. 

“Thought so. Here.” Robert poured a generous measure into the glass. “It’s brandy.”

The bottle looked eerily familiar. Stannis reached out and turned it to him.

“His. You can see the mark he made with his ring that last night.”

“That’s not possible.”

Robert didn’t answer.

_“Now remember what you promised me,” Mother scolded Father, but she was laughing._

_Father reached for the bottle and with the diamond in his signet ring, marked a scratch across the green glass._

_“I don’t understand,” Robert said._

_Stannis wasn’t sure either although he wasn’t about to give Robert the satisfaction of knowing that._

_“It means your father will stop before the brandy gets to that mark.”_

_“But why?” Stannis asked._

_“Because the last time your father had too much to drink, he promised his cousin we’d take a trip to Essos for him.”_

Renly or one of his friends must have scratched the bottle. The brand was still in production. He returned to the matter at hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Robert told him shortly. But as they sat in silence, listening to the lapping of the waves, and trying to ignore the swaying of the paper lanterns above the porch, Robert began to speak. “She left me. I suppose you already know.”

“Yes.”

“She threw me out, screeched she was sick of my affairs, and the rest of it.” Robert drank. “Never mind _her_ affairs, the money she ran through, or the way she kept me from my own children.”

Stannis forbore pointing out that Robert had never demonstrated much interest in any of his children—neither the ones with Cersei nor the sixteen bastards he’d sired.

“Her father is trying to get her to come back, but I don’t . . . it’s such a bloody mess. I don’t—” He stopped short and stiffened.

Over the water came the faint sounds of a clarinet and saxophone. “That’s . . .” He knew that song. He looked at Robert. His brother was a shadow of himself, the handsome young man lost in layers of fat, wrinkles, and dissipation, but even in the near darkness, he could see how haunted he was. “Someone must be playing music down the shore or off a yacht.” Water could carry sound from miles away.

“It’s the same song.”

“What?”

“Every night. It’s the same song. If you’re upstairs, it sounds like it comes from the living room. If you’re in the living room, it sounds like it’s playing out here. The same bloody song over and over again. _Their_ song.” When Stannis didn’t answer, Robert barked out a short laugh. “Don’t you remember? They used to play it when we were supposed to be asleep. ‘Moonlight Serenade.’”

Stannis listened. The tune was swelling and he was back on the stairs as a five-year-old boy watching his parents swaying to the music, Mother’s head on Father’s shoulder. “You’re not suggesting the house is haunted?” The song faded out. “Renly would have said something.” 

His brother topped off his drink. “Renly was a baby when they died. Besides I don’t think he’s down here all that often. His poncy furniture looks like it came from a bandbox.”

“The house never meant as much to him as it did to us.” It still stung like salt in a fresh wound that when dividing up the estate, Robert had given Storm’s End to Renly.

“I see them everywhere,” Robert said abruptly after another deep swallow of brandy.

Now Stannis knew something was very wrong.

“Ever since that day. I would turn a corner and I’d see Mother sitting at her desk writing a grocery list or I’d go out to the shed and I would see Father packing up his fishing gear. I couldn’t leave here fast enough.”

Stannis remembered. Robert had left for boarding school without a backwards glance. He had written the odd letter here and there—letters full of his exploits with his best friend, Ned. And Stannis and Renly had been left here with their parents’ family friend as a guardian. In time, he’d gone to school too, but it had been a different one from his brother. The letters had been sparser in arriving. Robert had spent practically every holiday away either with his friend or at the school. 

“I don’t know how you stood it.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Stannis said stiffly. “You left us here.”

Robert pushed the bottle toward Stannis. “Blame Uncle Cressen. He made all the arrangements.”

The breeze picked up and the gardenia scent wafted through the air again. There had to be a rational explanation for all of this. He was half tempted to find a flashlight and look for gardenia bushes.

“I was fourteen,” Robert said. “I did the best I could.”

“You gave this place to Renly.”

“I gave you the Dragonstone property.”

Dragonstone had been a drafty half-falling-down house on a pile of rock. Care, attention, and a considerable amount of money had gradually turned it into something solid, but in the end it was still a cheerless, barren house on a pile of rock. 

“I knew he wouldn’t remember and you would,” Robert explained in a puzzled voice. “That night after the accident, I heard them. Every sight, every sound, the smells—I asked Uncle Cressen to throw away her perfume—but still the scent was here. Can’t you smell it? _Somehow it’s here.”_

“Robert—” 

“I would have sold the place, but the will . . . Cersei wanted me to tear down the house and put up some glass and steel monstrosity. Renly doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember.”

Stannis absorbed this. He fought against the argument. Just because Robert had been haunted by the house did not mean he would have been. He loved the place. Robert had not thought; he seldom did.

“I should never have married Cersei.”

“Why did you?”

Robert peered in the depths of his glass. “She was the golden girl and I was the big man on campus. Everyone said I should—even Jon Arryn, who should have known better. Lyanna was gone. He thought Cersei’s father would be a good ally to have. Ha! Tywin bloody Lannister is no one’s ally.” He raised his glass in a mock toast and drank. “We finally talked at the end. She claims she adored me. All I can remember is her sour face, day after day, year after endless year.” He downed the last of the brandy. “I don’t know anymore. She’s hired a shark of a lawyer. Not that it matters. Mine has dug up dirt on her too. But there’s nothing left for me. If I were smart I would walk out into the ocean right now.”

“Divorce is not the end,” Stannis said, alarmed.

“We’ve been damned since the day we watched them drown.”

The tune started up again. Now it seemed to be coming from within the house.

“It’s too late for me, Stannis.”

“It’s never too late,” Stannis replied. “Father used to say that. He said he’d had his heart broken and then he’d met Mother and it all changed.”

The gardenia scent wafted through the air again. _”Family is important, Stannis.”_

“I never asked how they met. I wish I had.”

“It was at a dance.” Robert nodded toward the house where the music could still be heard. “That song was playing and they danced and she said they knew then.”

“They would not have wanted you to give up. They . . . would have wanted us to . . .” Their parents would have wanted them to get along. 

“What would I do? The business is in pieces. Ned’s gone. I have—”

“You have your children.” And then sensing that Robert would probably have very valid points against this argument, Stannis continued, “You have Renly. You have . . . you have me.” 

Robert seemed to be listening. 

Stannis waved at the ocean. “Mother and Father would not have wanted that for you.”

The gardenia fragrance dissipated. 

“It’s never too late,” he repeated.

The clarinets went into their final flourishes and then there was only the sound of waves lapping at the beach. It was serenade enough.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks to [Vana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana), who provides me with live grammar/word choice advice, who looked this over, and who always, always encourages me to post things.


End file.
